…about too much cricket. But worry not. Much has been pontificated on the topic already, so I am going to keep this short and give you my take.
First of all, living on the road is hard. Regardless of what Gavaskar says, or how bombastically. Anybody who’s spent a lot of time on the road will tell you this. And unless you’re a rock star with groupies to entertain you, you’re going to have to have some emotional duress. Maintaining a family back home is not easy. I’ll leave it at that and not go into how no “boom boom” can mess with a person’s head; Warne has demonstrated that amply.
Secondly, I have a hypothesis: too much cricket manifests itself in poor performances, most noticeably in fielding. I have often been surprised to see good teams put in horrifying performances; most memorably, when Australia’s usually excellent fielding dropped to the same abysmal levels as those of the English during the last Ashes series. That played no small role in them conceding the coveted urn. Because of this, I was hoping that the Indians would get about a month off in the weeks preceding the World Cup. And the Indian board got that right. Although not contiguous, India does have four of the eight weeks off. The last series before the WC hosts Sri Lanka and West Indies — rather weak teams — and some players could be rested at that time too, although unlikely.
Lastly, a note about resting players. Resting them to avoid burnout is a great idea. India will certainly need to do that, given their workload. IRotating players has a lot of other benefits too. But when you rest a player, rest him completely. Let him off for two games, go back home and spend a week with his family. Having them travel with the team (and the travelling is the real issue with “too much cricket”) and then carry drinks on the day of the game is not that relaxing. They need to get their minds off cricket for a few days.
I’ll end my rant here.
